R&D in US Educational Institutions: Allocation of NSF Grants 2002 - 2015

Presented by Sahar Alhassan, Kaitlyn Lynes,
Deepa Mehta, & Ilya Perepelitsa
December 14, 2015

1. Project Background

  • National Science Foundation (NSF) is a key engine that funds US-based R&D
  • Our group focused on NSF grant dollars allocated to US institutions from 2002 to 2015
  • We focused on the relationships between grant type (new, continuing, revised) over time
  • We also examined the types of approved grant projects, as well as institutions and disciplines that received federal funding
  • We also began to explore geographic concentration of grant funding

2. Research Method

  • Started with the NSF Grant Database
  • Collated yearly data into a separate subsets of a dataframe
  • Aggregated data by year using loops and packaged
  • Developed a series of plots
load("NSF.RData") 
library(ggplot2) 
newdata <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '2014-01-01'), ] 
newdata1 <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '2013-01-01'), ] 
newdata2 <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '2012-01-01'), ] 
newdata3 <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '2008-01-01'), ] 
newdata4 <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '1999-01-01'), ] 
newdata5 <- schoolsall[which(schoolsall$starting_date < '2015-01-01' & schoolsall$starting_date > '1999-01-01'), ] 

3. NSF Monthly Grant Allocation 2014-2015

  • One year snapshot
  • Continued and New Projects Received More Grant Allocation than Revised Projects

4. NSF Grant Dollar Allocation by Month over a Two-Year Period: 2013-2015

  • We decided to look at this over two years
  • This showed us a trend

5. NSF Grant Dollar Allocation by Month over a Thirteen-Year Period: 1999-2015

  • We looked at this trend over 16 years
  • Towards the end of every year, we see more grant dollars allocated

6. Two Hypotheses

  1. The cheaper grants appear to be allocated in the beginning of the year and more expensive ones towards the end (reflects the "difficulty")
  2. Pressure to spend the Congress Appropriations results in an increased demand for grants and makes NSF choose more expensive grants

7. Types of NSF Grants 2002-2015 by Action Type

  • We broke it this trend down by action type
  • Revised grants saw a large gap between 2001 and 2004

8. Types of Research by Recipient Types

  • During this period, most grants were in the Engineering, Mathematics and Geosciences
  • Institutions appear to receive most of the grants directly

9. Types of Research

## 10. NSF Grant Dollar Allocation by Month as a Function of Research Duration * Are projects with a longer duration allocated larger grants?

11. NSF Grant Dollars by Research Duration & By Type

12. Gaps in Research Funding: 2004

  • What accounts for the gap in data in 2004?
  • Is this a gap in data or was research funding halted due to a government shutdown in 2004?

13. Density of Grant Types

14. Density of Grants - By Subject

15. Density of Grants - By Recipient Type

16. Density of Grants by Action Type and Recipient Type

17. Density of Grants by Action Type and by States

18. Density of Grants by Action Type and by Subject

19. Aggregate sum historical and plotted by State

20. State summaries by Type of Research

21. Discussion

  • Finding
  • Finding

22. Preliminary Conclusions and Next Steps

  • Finding
  • Finding

23. Thank You!